Japan’s Gaming Fanzines Delve Into the Most Obsessive Topics

Doujin, or fan-made merchandise, is big business in Japan. Nearly half a million people will descend upon a Tokyo convention center from Dec. 29 to 31 for Comic Market, a twice-annual exposition of unofficial creations. At this Comic-Con for fanzines you’ll find creative work based on popular comics, TV shows and movies, plus wholly original indie stuff. These die-hard fans’ output encompasses every creative medium imaginable: You can buy fan-made manga, music CDs, game software, tchotchkes, clothing and figures.

Many of these works of graphical fanfiction are based on characters from popular videogames. But at Comic Market, you’ll also encounter fanzines devoted to the hobby of gaming itself. What’s remarkable about some of these thin volumes, besides the level of intricate detail lavished on them, is how obsessively minute the subject matter can be. One might be devoted to cataloging all of the canceled games for a particular obscure game machine. Another might take a deep dive into every detail about a certain game.

“The truth about who made the video games I loved — and how they were made — was no longer accessible,” said “Zekuu,” a creator of doujin zines who runs a “circle” (group of like-minded fans) called Game Area 51, in an e-mail. (Due to the underground nature of doujin, which often appropriate and remix copyrighted material, creators almost exclusively use pen names.)

Zekuu’s first book, Video Game Chronicle 1: Kiki Kaikai, was the result of a decade’s worth of on-and-off research into the obscure arcade game. At this year’s Comic Market, he will release a book devoted entirely to the work of Shigeki Toyama, the designer who created, among other things, the ships in the game Xevious.

“The books I publish contain information found nowhere else,” said Zekuu. “I receive it by speaking directly with the people who produced the actual games.... My personal dream is that as many people as possible gain new insights and rediscover the joys of retro games through my books.”

Read on for more examples of the doujin magazines that catalog the obsessions of Japan’s most devoted gaming fans.

Unofficial Ranma ½: Bakuretsu Rantouhen Beginner’s Guide

The term “poverty game” is used in North America’s martial-arts videogame subculture to describe less-popular fighting games with a limited pool of players. By those standards, the Super Nintendo game Ranma ½: Hard Battle, based on the popular gender-bending manga series, goes well beyond poverty into near-homelessness. But this game maintains a small but intensely loyal following in Japan who are determined to spread awareness of the title’s merits. This guide, made by said fans, covers detailed attack data and strategies for all the game’s characters.

Peggle XBLA Guidebook

Homemade strategy guides go back almost as far as the advent of gaming in Japan. Most famously, Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon, started his company Game Freak as a doujin circle, making and selling illustrated guides for early '80s arcade titles. This book from the circle Chihatan is a modern example of the fan-published strategy guide: a carefully laid out and surprisingly in-depth look at U.S.-based PopCap Games’ Peggle for Xbox 360, complete with screenshots and comical illustrations. Since American games aren’t very popular in Japan and the Xbox 360 is extremely unpopular, the fact that this book exists is a testament to the power of niches in Japanese fandom.

Seiken Densetsu 3 Illustrations

“Takai Shiro no Otoko” is the personal doujin-publishing outlet of professional designer and illustrator Nobuteru Yuuki, who has drawn character designs for a huge variety of games over his career. Despite never seeing an official release outside Japan, Seiken Densetsu 3 (the sequel to Secret of Mana) remains one of his most popular works. His doujin are known for being lavish, and this one is no exception: It features a hardcover binding with a rice paper cover, and a 50-50 split between color art reproductions and monochrome prints of his rough design sketches.

Mega Drive Good-By Soft Catalogue

One of the most beloved subjects among game nerds the world over is canceled and prototype games. This book, by the fan circle Vafiyondan, is a painstakingly assembled collection of all known canceled games for the Sega Genesis, known in Japan as the Mega Drive. It also includes information on each title, including any available screenshots and concept art. Beyond simply being a reference, the book takes a detailed look at a few particularly well-known cancellations, including a series of lengthy exposes on the early Mega Drive role-playing game Moon Dancer.

Red Ring Love

Xbox 360 and the Western-made games most often associated with it are nigh-invisible to all but the most devoted of gaming fans. This circle called 360 Kaitezu has produced a series of doujin offerings called Red Ring Love, collections of art, comics and fan tributes. It’s the distinctly Japanese interpretations of Western games like Gears of War, Halo and BioShock that really make this series fascinating.

3D-Q-WAVE Famicom 3D System Volume

Written by the circle 3D Kyoudaisha, this book analyzes the small handful of pseudo-3-D games that were released for the Famicom, known as the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan. The authors have also recently released a follow-up about similar titles on the Sega Master System. A particularly amusing element is the cover, which, for apparently no reason at all, features the main characters of the Dirty Pair anime series in a highly suggestive pose (NSFW). “This is not actually a Dirty Pair book,” the cover notes.

Bunkai Special

Hardware nerds are a particular subset of hardcore gamers, but the guys who dismantle consoles and admire their innards simply for kicks are even more hardcore. This doujin by Ryusendo is made for these most devout of hardware appreciators, dissecting, labeling, and examining the hardware of consoles ranging from the obscure (Bandai’s WonderSwan) to the really obscure (NEC’s PC-FX) to the really, really obscure (Tomy’s Pyuu-ta). If you ever wanted to see what makes forgotten consoles of Japanese gaming tick, this book is sure to please.

Game development is tough going — particularly in Japan, where already long workday hours are made even more torturous by crunch times. Despite their already challenging work schedules, some designers take it upon themselves to assemble the raw materials from game production and self-publish it. One such designer is Han, most famous for his contributions to games from the developer Treasure. These two collections highlight his character design and animation rough sketches for the company’s Game Boy Advance games. There’s a lot of art packed into these books, particularly of sprite animation sequences — the detail of which makes one’s appreciation of hand-drawn pixel art even stronger.